As the recent passing of Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves reminds us, the mid-’60s were surely the heyday of adventure fiction on television. In addition to MI, there were numerous other TV series devoted to action and adventure in the decade—fondly remembered shows such as The Man from UNCLE, T.H.E Cat, It Takes a Thief, The Wild, Wild West, The Fugitive, The Avengers, The Saint, The Prisoner, Secret Agent (aka Danger Man), Amos Burke: Secret Agent, Honey West, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and others. Their characters’ combination of optimism and determination makes them still refreshing and enjoyable today.

Various TV networks occasionally try their hand at reviving this tradition, and the time is probably ripe for it given the ability of CGI effects which cut the costs of filming action scenes. The new Fox show Human Target (Wednesdays, 8 p.m. EDT) is one of the best attempts thus far.

Based on a DC comics character, the show chronicles the adventures of Christopher Chance (Mark Valley), a professional short-term bodyguard who protects people from specific threats. Chance looks to be in his mid to late thirties and is very smart, experienced, resourceful, courageous, and skilled at all sorts of combat. He is also very personable and sympathetic toward others. (more…)

In addition to its well-publicized, disastrous experiment with moving Jay Leno to primetime, NBC has done some good things this year. Perhaps the best of these is the new sitcom Community.

The concept is simple but rich in characters and potential comical situations. Suspended lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) has been sent back to college because his academic degree was discovered to be phony. Now he’s stuck at the local community college—which he describes as a “school-shaped toilet.”

The show includes at least a few genuinely amusing moments per episode, but it also takes its characters seriously to some degree, which makes it more than just a string of gags. In the first episode, Winger ends up leading a Spanish-language study group even though he has little grasp of the language. The various members of the group are comically beset by a multitude of emotional, social, and functional problems.

Winger, however, very quickly (and somewhat implausibly) turns the group into what he describes as a “community.” The tables are soon turned on him, however, as he is revealed to all as a shallow, selfish, conceited moral relativist. This is not characterized as a good thing. (more…)

Although it’s ambiguous about much, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island makes two things extremely clear: Leonardo DiCaprio is a seriously big movie star, and delivering on genre expectations excuses a multitude of sins as far as audiences are concerned.

The Scorsese-directed suspense-horror film has been number one at the U.S box office for two consecutive weekends, despite its stunning  collection of genre cliches, long-out-of-fashion narrative ambiguity, agonizingly slow pace, and few real surprises, along with the director’s usual arresting visual style. Thus a good deal of the credit must go to DiCaprio’s star power.

Telling the tale of a U.S. Marshall, played by DiCaprio, who with his new partner investigates the escape of a violent prisoner/patient at a federal detention and treatment facility on an island several miles off the coast of Massachusetts, Shutter Island employs enough horror and suspense cliches to scare off any discerning moviegoer. 

There are, for example, the isolated island itself (so reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and many other suspense stories), a stormy scene in a graveyard, wanderings through a confusing maze of corridors in an insane asylum, the hardnosed detective investigating a case that becomes much more complex than he thought it would, a sinister ex-Nazi, a character’s disturbing memories of wartime, classical music backing a scene revealing atrocities, weird people making perplexing claims, a character taking a hypodermic away from a doctor and injecting the latter, an automobile explosion, and many, many more.  (more…)

If you want to identify the most controversial person in television, forget about Glenn Beck and Keith Olberman. The answer is obvious: Jay Leno. 

The once and now returning host of NBC’s Tonight Show has incited hostility and outright hatred for many years, simply by virtue of being more commercially successful than rivals David Letterman and Conan O’Brien. In particular, fans of his competitors have derided Leno for being overly conventional and failing to challenge late-night viewers by pushing the boundaries of taste. 

That, however, has almost certainly been a primary reason for Leno’s success: he amuses viewers without overwhelming them with sensational material such as O’Brien’s masturbating bears and potty-mouthed dog and Letterman’s aggressive non sequiturs. Leno is clearly out to amuse, not to change the world, and that is exactly the sort of programming most people seem to want in that 11:35 time slot. 

As a result, Leno returned to his Tonight Show helm last night after a hiatus of several months in which NBC tried moving him to primetime and shifting O’Brien from The Late Show at 12:35 a.m. to the Tonight Show at 11:35. As has been well-documented, the change was a predictable disaster both for NBC’s primetime ratings and for the Tonight Show. O’Brien toned down his comedy for the earlier audience, which didn’t work, and Leno could not make a nightly show consistently special enough to draw viewers at 10 p.m.  (more…)

The Fox Network’s venerable action-drama series 24, now in its eighth year, has always had to perform a very difficult balancing act: trying to surprise viewers who expect to be surprised, while somehow staying sufficiently connected with reality to sustain viewer interest. In addition, the showmakers have to try to remain somewhat near the extremely high standard established by seasons 2 and 3, in which they expertly blended political relevance, suspenseful drama, theater-quality action sequences, and vivid characters who continually surprise us with their choices without ever bogging down in unnecessary pretensions to psychological depth.

This latter characteristic is a key element of the show’s success. Like real human beings, the characters in 24 are motivated largely by present concerns while filtering them through their individual experiences and personalities. In conventional suspense literature and filmed dramas of our time, the central characters typically are given some traumatic events in the recent or distant past which they are trying to work through and over which they agonize as the present narrative events remind them of it.

Of course such things do happen in real life, and they are present in 24, but the use of it as a convention becomes more than a little ridiculous in today’s dramas as nearly all crime and suspense writers employ it, making it appear that no one but disturbed individuals gets involved in the good work of preventing violence toward innocents. That’s clearly not the message the creators of these narratives intend to send, and it conflicts with their desire to create plausible central characters. (more…)

NBC CEO Jeff Zucker

In a move that bodes well to strengthen TV programming overall in both primetime and late night, NBC has confirmed that Jay Leno will be moved back to his original 11:30 slot and his 10 p.m. show canceled on February 11, as rumored over the past week. USA Today reports:

Under the new plan, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon would move from 12:35 a.m. to 1:05. (Carson Daly’s talk show, which now follows Fallon, would be canceled, though Daly would remain under contract at the network.).

O’Brien, however, decided not to agree to the changes, in a public statement:

I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction.

Thus Leno will return to the Tonight Show in its usual time slot, and O’Brien will move on to presumably greener pastures. (more…)

Press reports and even jokes on last night’s Jay Leno Show point to the likelihood that NBC’s experiment with moving Leno from late night to prime time is over, and that the instigator of the changes, Conan O’Brien, will have to accept a diminished role as a consequence of his successful campaign to force Leno out of his 11:30 slot.

The reports are that the Jay Leno Show will stop producing new episodes on February 1 or possibly February 12 when NBC begins broadcasting the Olympics, and will not return thereafter. Leno will go back to 11:35, and O’Brien-well, nobody is quite sure what’s happening with him yet. NBC execs are reportedly considering having a half-hour Leno show at 11:35, the Tonight Show with O’Brien at 12:05, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon at 1:05. Carson Daly will presumably remain the only thing in the world that’s not funny at 2 in the morning (hat tip to my number 2 son for that joke).

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In the classic manner of series television, the USA Network’s latest new dramedy, White Collar (Fridays at 10 EST), smartly combines elements common to numerous other contemporary TV crime dramas, especially other USA Network shows, in a way calculated to maximize both familiarity and originality. Thus we have at the center of the show a pair of characters of strongly contrasting personalities but similar values under the surface differences, working together to do good.

Convicted confidence artist, forger, and counterfeiter Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) is released from prison (and shackled with an electronic tracking device) in order to assist FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) in catching other criminals. As in the 1960s TV series It Takes a Thief, Caffrey is young, handsome, single, insouciant, creative, and free-spirited, and his FBI handler is more mature, less handsome, and more conventional and stable. (more…)

Monk has been one of the best fiction series on U.S. television during the current decade, and tonight’s concluding episode (9 p.m. EST, USA Network) promises to tie up the few remaining vagrant plot strands. The show’s producers have done a good job of bringing various characters’ stories to conclusions and resolving the major problems each has faced during the eight years of the show’s run. That process has meshed well with the central interest of this type of mystery fiction: the restoration of bourgeois order after a major disruption caused by crime.

Thus, in recent episodes, Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer has become married, something he longed for, and Sharona has returned to apologize to and reconciled with Monk for her abrupt departure several years earlier. Widow and Monk’s assistant Natalie Teeger has found a potential husband as well, a Navy officer of very good character who clearly loves her. This will be quite a comfort to her as Natalie’s daughter, Julie, is moving on to college. (more…)

Edward Woodward, star of the iconic 1980s U.S. TV series The Equalizer and acclaimed films such as The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant, has died at the age of 79 after a long illness.

Woodward was best known for portraying stolid, highly principled characters who stood up for the defenseless and needy. His most prominent role for U.S. viewers was certainly that of former CIA agent Robert McCall in The Equalizer.

Living a simple and seemingly joyless life in New York City, McCall helped people in trouble who answered his ambiguous newspaper classified ads offering assistance. Every week the middle-aged former CIA agent would confront powerful, villainous individuals and gangs who were menacing and exploiting people unable to defend themselves. McCall’s shadowy past and evident contempt for corrupt authorities put him in continual jeopardy from his former government masters, yet his immense personal integrity and moral rectitude always saw him through–aided greatly, of course, by his CIA training and natural ingenuity. (more…)

Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture-animation version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol had a fairly blah opening weekend at the North American box office, finishing first with an unexpectedly miserly total of $31 million in ticket sales. Industry insiders had figured the film to bring in up to $45 million.

Disney studio representatives predict that this latest adaptation of the Dickens classic will do well over time, like Zemeckis’s 2004 The Polar Express. My assessment is that the biggest element limiting the film’s appeal in the pre-release period was the annoyingly frenetic and superficial quality suggested by its promotional trailers and commercials.

Jim Carrey’s noisiness appears to be wearing quite thin, and a film that features him as not only the protagonist but also three other characters sounds like far too much of a no longer good thing. Carrey would do well to follow the path of the equally obnoxious Robin Williams and move on to more serious film roles, even if it kills his career. Yes, I’m well aware that Carrey’s occasional serious performances have been pretty awful, but he’s dead either way, and it would be best to die with honor instead of ignominy. (more…)

Government broadcaster PBS is running a new, five-part series on a subject naturally interesting in our time: American Experience: The 1930s. Episodes are available for online viewing here.

The program is just what one would expect from PBS: earnest, well-researched, skillfully presented, and eager to lick the boots of government while criticizing individual freedom for everything wrong in the world.

There are two important lessons to be learned from the Great Depression, in my view:

1. The government causes business cycles and downturns through its erratic, manipulative policies intended to benefit powerful voting blocs at the expense of those less able to fight back. The market works when left alone, and government interference should be limited to redressing actual harms done by one party to another. This includes combating fraud, enforcing valid contracts, and setting clear but liberal guidelines for transactions made across political borders. And nothing more.

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After several years of mostly miserably failed attempts to ride the wave of crime dramas most of the other TV networks were successfully navigating, ABC has turned to the TV and cinematic crime drama maestro Jerry Bruckheimer for help. The resulting series, The Forgotten (Tuesdays, 10 p.m. EDT), is a solid crime drama and stands for some very appealing values.

The visual style of the show is familiar from Bruckheimer’s many other policiers, such as the CSI series. It has the same tendency toward dingy, low-level lighting, moving camera shots, eccentric framing, and the like, though in The Forgotten it’s not as frenetic and flashy as in most of Bruckheimer’s shows. That’s a good thing.

The stories and performances reflect the earnestness of Bruckheimer’s TV productions, while avoiding the sensationalism the other shows tend to indulge in. Christian Slater is Alex, an ex-cop who leads the Forgotten Network, a team of private citizens in Chicago who investigate cases in which the police have run out of leads and can’t afford to devote additional resources.

Avoiding both cynicism and romanticism, the program makes a point of showing how many people around the nation are willing to volunteer their help. It also shows people who refuse to help, thus making each such instance a test of a person’s character. (more…)

The new ABC sitcom Hank is rather short on big laughs, but it’s well-stocked with good ideas and sound values. The big question is, will ABC give it a chance?

Hank is the first of two family-oriented comedies ABC is running back-to-back on Wednesday nights beginning at 8 p.m., with each show featuring a big former sitcom star.

Most TV sitcoms, and that goes double for ABC, are largely about what the great filmmaker and satirist Preston Sturges referred to as Topic A. That is because Americans presumably have nothing else on their minds–other than being murdered or having to go to the hospital, the subject matter of most TV dramas.

Hank bucks that restriction, attempting to mine humor from family relationships, romantic love, and social conditions–which used to be the central subjects of Anglo-American comedy before the relaxing and eventual discarding of social and cultural restrictions on discussions of sex freed Hollywood to parade its inner sex maniac with impunity and in fact great financial success. (more…)

The smart new sitcom The Middle presents a positive but realistic view of Middle America’s pursuit of the American Dream. 

Set in the fictional small town of Orson, Indiana, The Middle (8:30 EDT) follows Hank in ABC’s new Wednesday night lineup and like the Kelsey Grammer program, it features a big sitcom star, Patricia Heaton, in a lead role. Also like Hank, The Middle takes a comic but sympathetic look at Middle America, described by central character Frankie Heck (Heaton) as “One of those places you fly over on your way from Somewhere to Somewhere Else but you wouldn’t live here.”

The writing of the pilot episode is particularly strong, and it even uses a couple of symbols to very good effect: a jet flying overhead, and Frankie’s new drivers license with its grossly unattractive photo documenting how badly life has been beating her down. Heaton’s willingness to make herself look silly and physically unattractive is used to great effect in the pilot episode and shows great sense on her part and that of the show’s producers.  (more…)

So what we have here are two worlds. One, without God and controlled by thoughts of evolution, is a spectacularly dreary, unhappy place without love or meaning. On the other hand, even a fictional God brings the world meaning, joy, liberty, and wonder.

The Invention of Lying tells a fantasy story about a world in which people do not know how to lie. The conceit is that lying is the product of a gene no human had before it suddenly popped up in Gervais’s character, forty-something failure Mark Bellison. But instead of simply being a cute comedy based on a silly concept, The Invention of Lying is an ambitious, largely unfunny comedy based on a silly concept. It’s not nearly as cute, innocent, or funny as Gervais’s fans might expect.

In fact, it’s really rather dreary. Yet it does have some good points. Although the early scenes in the film, in which we see Mark’s sad, unsuccessful life, are pretty depressing, there as some funny moments after he invents lying. In addition, the philosophy behind the film is sufficiently confused and inconsistent to be more interesting than one might expect.

Before Mark invents lying, no one in the society is truly happy. They speak with brutal honesty toward one another, in particular calling attention to one another’s faults and their own very base desires, and no one seems to mind the situation too much. (more…)

After a couple of weeks of unsubstantiated rumors, it has been confirmed that the forthcoming film The Invention of Lying is indeed intended to satirize religion and religious believers.

New York Post critic Kyle Smith has seen the film and describes it as “a full-on attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. It might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros.”

Although the commercials and theatrical trailers have presented the film as a cute comedy and made no allusion at all to any religious angle, much less a concerted case for atheism, Smith reports that the basis of the film is its attack on religion:

Gervais delights in what a faith-based society would call blasphemy, setting up an imaginary world in which no one ever lies. Except his character, who spreads what Gervais obviously sees as the biggest lie of all: Belief in God.

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As overly serious police procedurals have begun to saturate the primetime network TV schedules, the FOX network has quietly but wisely been exploring alternatives. Introduced a few years ago, the highly popular House varied the formula by moving it to a medical setting, and last year Fringe interestingly revived the delight in adventure characteristic of mid-1960s network TV dramas. 

The new drama Glee (Wednesdays, 9 p.m EDT) represents another approach and a bolder break with current trends–and it may point the way toward a welcome increase in variety among network TV dramas. 

Produced by Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck), Glee tells the story of high school teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) a married high school teacher in his thirties, who wants to restore McKinley High School’s glee club to its former glory, achieved when he was a member during his high school years and the club won the nationals.  (more…)

Given the huge advertising and publicity push, plus the presence of star actor Matt Damon (Bourne spy film series) and star director Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s series of heist films), I thought The Informant! had a good chance to win the box office sweepstakes during its opening days this past weekend.

I considered that a potentially baleful eventuality, considering that the new comedy seemed likely to be very anti-business, given the scenes shown in the trailers and the presence of politically active Damon and Soderbergh (director of Che, which lionized the Cuban Marxist revolutionary). I haven’t seen it yet, and so will reserve judgment on that score, but perhaps it makes sense that although The Contender did better than expected, it was clobbered by the animated comedy Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. (more…)

The latest episode of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery includes a surprise: criticism of communism.

The U.S. TV network PBS and the British Broadcasting Corporation, both government-owned, tend to soft-pedal the evils of communism while placing every imperfection of life in the United States under a microscope. Hence it’s rather noteworthy when those organizations air a program in which the central problems are traceable to communism. That’s what happened in last week’s episode of Masterpiece Mystery. (more…)